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For all those in Arkansas Little Rock, head over to the Little Rock Film Festival and check out TOKYO COWBOYS - it screens May 17th and May 18th
It's a superb documentary about ex-pat life in Japan and definitely not to be missed!
Here's the film website too: Tokyo Cowboys
I'm off to Cannes on Sunday where we'll be giving MindFlesh it's market premiere! The details are:
For those readers unfamiliar with the way this works, these screenings are only open to film industry insiders and intended primarily to showcase the film to distributors looking to buy new titles.
Unfortunately I'll be on my own this year as Helen has to stay back at base and man the fort. But to keep her in touch with developments on the ground I've agreed to post a daily report on Susan Ee's excellent blog - which has become an important resource for indie filmmakers - Feral Dream.
San Francisco Screenings
In other screenings news, MindFlesh will make it's North American premiere at Another Hole in The Head - the genre festival run by San Francisco Independent Film Festival. We have two dates:
The festival has a very cool line up of films including a British film I'm really looking forward to, The Vanguard.
This is a polite reminder to readers in the UK that they may have woken up this morning as criminals. Law-abiding yesterday, criminals today because of the passing into law of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill - part of which outlaws the viewing of titillating sexually-violent images. What's bizarre about the new law is that a consenting couple could quite legally make a home sex tape for their own use but then be thrown into prison for three years for watching it back again.
Rather than repeat all the discussion and arguments, here's an excellent article from the Scottish Sunday Herald. And another quicker read from the BBC.
The most alarming thing about the passing of this law is that it's another tightening of the belt strangling people's freedom. Quite why certain folk want to interfere in the lives of others I don't understand. I have a suspicion that it's all about envy - why should someone else be having all the fun if they're denied?
So this was the week when we finally showed MindFlesh to a paying public!
I arrived in the UK at the start of the week and spent a couple of days with my mum checking through her bills, adjusting timers, fixing clocks and replacing her toilet seat – oh the showbiz lifestyle I lead ;)
On May 1st I travelled into London on a delayed train from the south coast and registered for Cine-Excess II the second international conference on cult films. Having been at the World Horror Con just a month earlier it was inevitable that I was going to be comparing the two. I have to say that this year CineXS won out by a long way: the speakers had prepared professional presentations, Roger Corman was guest of honour and the atmosphere was friendly and welcoming.
For most, the climax of the conference would most probably have been Kim Newman on stage interviewing Roger Corman at the end of three days of cult discussion. For me I’m afraid, my sights were on the MindFlesh world premiere – our first exposure to a paying public audience!
I have to say that the projectionists at the ICA were fantastic fellas and took the time to finesse the projection image and sound until even the most perfectionist director would be happy. So, even though we were screening from a digiBeta copy of the film (rather than the HDCAM SR master), the movie looked and sounded great.
Ok so here’s the truth: MindFlesh can be quite an assault on the viewer’s mind and body so I wasn’t expecting air-punching and cheers as the first end credit hits the screen ;) But as the lights came up and I made my way back to the stage to answer questions, gauging from the volume of the applause and immediate feedback seemed to be overwhelming positive. I guess we’ll learn more about the audience reaction as time rolls on.
The clip below is the 15 min Q&A after the premiere screening. It naturally contains spoilers because we’re discussing a film the audience has seen but if you’re someone that likes to know as much as you can about a movie before seeing it, or, if you’re someone from my future that has seen MindFlesh as screenings yet to be held when I wasn’t present then here’s what I might have said. [Apologies for the poor sound and picture quality]
A huge “thank you” to all the people that came to the screening!
I wasn't able to attend all presentations as there were always two parallel sessions in progress and I often got engrossed in conversation that carried on long after lunch had finished. The Saturday night conference party at the Curzon soho was cool too as I managed to snag a table close to the bar and close to free grub! ;) If we hadn’t been kicked out then I suspect that Stephen Parsons, long-time composer and recently the director of Wishbaby, and I would have still been there at daybreak.
